Author, Historian, Voyager

A Journey Across Java

Beyond Bali, much of Indonesia is unknown to many Australians. But in many respects, Indonesia is Australia's most important overall relationship. Yet the historical and cultural differences of our nearest neighbour are vast, possibly among the widest of any pair of adjoining countries. For the traveller, opportunity knocks: here is a frequently overlooked destination that begs exploration.

Indonesia is the largest archipelago nation-state in the world. Its extremities are six thousand four hundred kilometres apart, as far as Perth, Western Australia is from Wellington, New Zealand, or from San Francisco to Boston in the USA.

Almost seventeen thousand islands both separate and link the Indian and the Pacific Oceans and contain a rich human diversity of over three hundred and fifty different ethnic groups. The people are a subtle blend of cultures that have invaded since neolithic times – Malay, Chinese, Indian, Melanesian, Portugese, Arabian, English and Dutch. Their history is a saga of wave after wave of human migration who either absorbed earlier arrivals, eliminated them or drove them into less favorable regions such as deep forests, high mountains, or remote islands (where they can still be found to this day).

Heritage Destinations is organising a tour across Java for 14 days from August 17 to August 30, 2016. With Ian Burnet as your guide and 'expert'.

Highlights include …

Our starting pointis Jakarta,centre for government, politics and business - the brain of Indonesia. West, Central and East Java follow including Yogyakarta, the World Heritage Listed sites of Buddhist Borobudur and Hindu Prambanan and other interesting centres such as Solo and Malang before we depart Java at Surabaya.

The program concludes in Bali with an optional 8 day extension to the rugged Nusa Tenggara island of Flores and the dragons of Komodo National Park, another World Heritage Listed site.